Have you ever gone to soundcloud and looked at the charts? Most of the charts are topped by hiphop/rap no matter what genre you choose! 
 
Not to pick on SC, same thing with Reverbnation and Bandcamp. 
 
On Spotify there was an artist who created 45 seconds of silence, uploaded it... They set up PCs, and asked their fans to do the same, they looped the silent song so many times they made something like $20,000 on the plays! They eventually took the song/silence down, but the damage was done. 
 
The question came up though.... If they had done the same with "Hey Jude" would they have taken that song down? Can you get your competitors song kicked off by doing this to them?
 
All of these platforms have these problems and my guess is they are all trying to figure out what to do about it.
 
So where do you draw the line? Can you draw the line? How do you control all this? Or do you just let it be a free for all?
 
My opinion is that without some control, legit artist eventually give up and go away, which destroys their business, but maybe I'm wrong about that too. But how do you control it? I have no clue.
 
What is your opinion?
 
gabo

gbowling
Have you ever gone to soundcloud and looked at the charts? Most of the charts are topped by hiphop/rap no matter what genre you choose! 
 
Not to pick on SC, same thing with Reverbnation and Bandcamp. 
 
On Spotify there was an artist who created 45 seconds of silence, uploaded it... They set up PCs, and asked their fans to do the same, they looped the silent song so many times they made something like $20,000 on the plays! They eventually took the song/silence down, but the damage was done. 
 
The question came up though.... If they had done the same with "Hey Jude" would they have taken that song down? Can you get your competitors song kicked off by doing this to them?
 
All of these platforms have these problems and my guess is they are all trying to figure out what to do about it.
 
So where do you draw the line? Can you draw the line? How do you control all this? Or do you just let it be a free for all?
 
My opinion is that without some control, legit artist eventually give up and go away, which destroys their business, but maybe I'm wrong about that too. But how do you control it? I have no clue.
 
What is your opinion?
 
gabo

 
Not sure what you mean about hip hop, it's legitimately the most streamed music in the world so no surprise that it dominates sites like Soundcloud. 
 
I should think Spotify is constantly developing algorithm detections to weed out scams and fake streams, just as Google had to constantly develop its algorithm to weed out such things as keyword stuffing and link farms in the early days of search engines. 

sharke
I should think Spotify is constantly developing algorithm detections to weed out scams and fake streams, just as Google had to constantly develop its algorithm to weed out such things as keyword stuffing and link farms in the early days of search engines. 

I think that Google may have been less than completely successful in this endeavor.

sharke 
Not sure what you mean about hip hop, it's legitimately the most streamed music in the world so no surprise that it dominates sites like Soundcloud. 
 

 
I think you totally missed the point. I have no problem with hiphop or it being the most of anything.. What I have a problem with is the top 50 in the CLASSICAL CHARTS are full of hiphop!! As are Alternative, Indie, Indie Rock and many other genres. 
 
People are uploading hiphop/rap and setting the genre on the song as "classical" and then turning on bot's to play that tune over and over driving it to the top of the charts. Some of the tunes that clearly aren't that great have 6+ million plays and they are listed in the classical music genre. That's the problem, not that hiphop/rap or any other style of music is good or bad.
 
gabo

I wouldn't put any thought into those charts, they're too easy to manipulate.
I've got 3 PCs at home and 2 in my office.  I could have them all stream my own music non-stop 24 hours a day, and push me up the charts.  It wouldn't mean that anyone actually LIKED it or would pay me for it.
 

Slugbaby
I wouldn't put any thought into those charts, they're too easy to manipulate.
I've got 3 PCs at home and 2 in my office.  I could have them all stream my own music non-stop 24 hours a day, and push me up the charts.  It wouldn't mean that anyone actually LIKED it or would pay me for it.

Yes, that is the point. It's not that I'm putting any thought into them. it's that, as a classical fan, when I go to the classical charts I'm looking for good classical music. But I don't find it, I find other genres. Eventually I just stop going to SC to look for classical music, so they lost a customer. I guess I'm the only who sees that as a problem, which means everyone else's opinion is that there isn't a problem. Cool..
 
gabo

gbowling
 
 
Yes, that is the point. It's not that I'm putting any thought into them. it's that, as a classical fan, when I go to the classical charts I'm looking for good classical music. But I don't find it, I find other genres. Eventually I just stop going to SC to look for classical music, so they lost a customer. I guess I'm the only who sees that as a problem, which means everyone else's opinion is that there isn't a problem. Cool..
 
gabo

It may not all be meddling by the masses. Netflix, where the genre choices are fully under the control of the company, typically lists the same movie under more than a half dozen completely incompatible genres. As near as I can determine this is a strategy to cover the fact that they actually have a small streaming catalog compared to DVD rentals. Apparently the hours of wasted time seeing the same title pop up wherever you search is supposed to convince you that their selection is enormous.